A while back, when I was still job hunting, building mini-projects, and trying to figure out what I wanted my future to look like, I became obsesse...
For further actions, you may consider blocking this person and/or reporting abuse
I would say dev.to gives us the opportunity to Market ourselves since we are showcasing what we can do. It doesn't have to be advertising a service or product you have (though that is common).
If we show what we can do, it builds trust to someone out there that needs that type of engineer. Without it showcasing yourself, it's difficult because they would have to assume they would take your word for it (which they won't by default).
I think of it as this way "If a recruiter wants to hire you, you need to prove that you can do the job".
Great work Aryan! Can't wait to see you in Virtual Coffee (Hopefully today) :D
That's actually a really good way of looking at it.
I think before I started digging into marketing, I associated it mostly with products, ads, campaigns, and all the obvious stuff.
But platforms like DEV made me realize that a lot of marketing is really just making your work visible enough for the right people to find it.
Not in a fake "personal brand" way. More in a "here's what I'm learning, here's what I'm building, here's how I think" kind of way.
And you're right, trust has to come from somewhere. People can't evaluate what they can't see.
Honestly, this blog series probably wouldn't exist if I hadn't started posting here in the first place lol.
And yes! Looking forward to the future Virtual Coffee as well. It's been really cool seeing how many opportunities and friendships have come from simply sharing things online. Wouldn't have imagined meeting so many new people in just 7 months of writing on dev!
Hey Aryan! Can't wait either. To be honest, I couldn't imagine myself getting this far and make genuine connections within the first half of this year. It is really an accomplishment I would never imagine achieving!
I had a similar shift recently. I used to think good code would speak for itself, but that only works if people can actually understand what you built and why it matters.
What stood out to me is how similar the thinking feels to engineering. You're still trying to reduce assumptions, understand what the other side needs, and adjust based on feedback.
The output is different, but the process feels closer than I expected.
I think that's exactly what surprised me.
Before getting exposed to marketing, I assumed the process would feel completely different from engineering. Instead, I kept running into the same patterns: understanding requirements, identifying assumptions, gathering feedback, iterating, and trying to reduce the gap between what you think people need and what they actually need.
The output is different, but the underlying loop feels surprisingly familiar.
Maybe that's why I've enjoyed it more than I expected 😄
Yeah that loop part is what makes it click.
At first it feels like a completely different skill, but once you see it that way, it’s basically the same process applied to people instead of systems.
That’s what made it interesting for me too. It stopped feeling like “marketing” and more like another layer of problem solving.
Here’s what I think about indie developers and marketing:
If you’re a genius, you don’t need marketing. Others will find you.
If you’re an ordinary indie developer like me, keep improving both your development and marketing skills.
If you have money, pay a marketing professional! 🤣
I used to think exactly like that, that if you're a genius people will just find you.
But after seeing a lot of really good work go unnoticed, I’m not so sure anymore. Talent creates the value, but something still has to get it in front of the right people.
Agree on the second part though. For most of us it’s probably just improving both sides over time. And yeah, paying someone who knows what they’re doing definitely works too.
I’m glad to see that many people are noticing you these days without you having to pay a high-priced professional marketer! 🤣
LOL
Honestly, after spending some time around marketing, I'm not even sure the geniuses get to skip it.
There are probably thousands of incredibly talented people building amazing things that most of us will never hear about.
I think talent helps create value.
Marketing helps people discover that value.
Though your third option is definitely the fastest one 🤣
"Pay someone who knows what they're doing" is a surprisingly valid strategy.
Posting on DEV.to is a form of marketing. And I'm lucky to have supportive friends like you who help spread the word. Thank you for your continued support! 🥳
I didn't start it to help my career, but it ended up having one of the most profound impacts of anything I ever learned on my career: Meditation and mindfulness.
If psychology educates you about how people work, then meditation and mindfulness educate you about how you personally work. It's such a wonderful way of living, and so different from how I used to live. Everything is an opportunity to learn, an opportunity to be present, an opportunity to grow. In the book "Full Catastrophe Living" the author says: We're starting from the assumption that as long as you're breathing, there is more right with you than wrong with you.
The principles of mindfulness, as set out in that book, have made me more accepting of my own humanity. Being accepting of my own humanity, and the possibility of making mistakes, has in turn made me less fearful. And being less fearful has changed...everything. Once you get to a point where your own sense of self-worth is not on the line in your job anymore, you become way more relaxed than before.
I don't go back and forth ten thousand times on things anymore. I analyze, I decide, I do. With the certainty of knowing I have good judgement, and the compassion to forgive myself any mistake I might make. People say you can't forgive yourself, but I disagree. Sometimes the only one who can forgive yourself is you. Maybe because others won't. Or maybe because others don't blame you in the first place. Sometimes you need your own forgiveness to be able to move on.
Because as long as you're breathing there is the possibility of creating beauty in the world.
This is a beautiful answer honestly.
What stands out to me is that almost everything you described sounds less like learning a skill and more like changing your relationship with yourself.
The line about your self-worth no longer being on the line every time you make a decision really hit me.
I think a lot of us spend years trying to avoid mistakes because we unconsciously treat mistakes as evidence about who we are. Which makes every decision feel heavier than it actually is.
The idea of being able to analyze, decide, act, and then trust yourself enough to handle whatever happens afterward feels incredibly freeing.
Also:
That's one of those sentences I'll probably remember for a long time.
Thank you for sharing this. I really appreciate comments like these, the kind that make me think in more ways than one.
Such an interesting read! It's so cool that you have the curiosity and courage to go out of your comfort zone and learn things that are out of your box 👏🏻
If I were to point out one thing that I picked up to help my career, but that changed much more, I would point to Docusaurus. It appears in many job offer descriptions for technical writers, but I never had the opportunity to work with it. I ran it, started building, and I loved it! And actually, this got me into coding 💛 I'm still a beginner, but learning to code gives me lots of fun and satisfaction!
Thank you Klaudia! 💛
And that's actually a perfect example of what I was talking about in the post.
You started learning Docusaurus because it was useful for your career, but along the way it opened the door to something much bigger.
I think some of the most meaningful learning happens like that. You chase one thing and accidentally discover an entirely new interest.
Also, getting into coding through technical writing feels like such a technical-writer origin story 😄
Exactly! I especially like how it changed my mindset – before, coding was something reserved only for software engineers, who I considered much more intelligent and experienced.
After learning Docusaurus, I got a bit more self-confident. It turned out that it's not such a black magic and, given the accessibility of information nowadays, it's something I can actually learn myself 🙂
same realization hit me mid-build. I kept optimizing the code thinking that was the bottleneck. distribution was the actual job the whole time.
I think developers naturally assume the bottleneck is technical because that's the part we can see and control.
Then eventually you build something decent and realize the next challenge isn't "can I build it?" but "can I get it in front of the right people?" Very different problem, but just as important.
yeah, once you flip it's uncomfortable - shipping fast loses meaning if nobody in the right room is paying attention
Many people don't intentionally set out to learn marketing—it often happens naturally through business, freelancing, content creation, or trying to promote a product or service. Once you start working on attracting customers, building a brand, or growing an online presence, marketing becomes a skill you pick up along the way.
The interesting thing is that marketing is everywhere. Whether you're writing social media posts, creating content, networking, or selling an idea, you're essentially marketing.
At Aqva Marketing, we've worked with business owners who initially had no marketing background but gradually learned the importance of SEO, content marketing, reputation management, and customer engagement. Sometimes the best marketers are those who learned through real-world experience rather than formal training.
Has anyone else here accidentally become a marketer while pursuing something completely different? 🤔
Aryan, the line about studying marketing but actually ending up studying people was probably my favorite part.
I have noticed something similar whenever I learn about things outside of development. You start because of the technical side, but somehow you end up learning more about communication, trust, and how people make decisions.
I also liked your point about already doing marketing without realizing it. When you're building projects, writing posts, or putting together a portfolio, you're not just showing what you've built. You're also telling people something about yourself, whether you realize it or not.
I think that's what surprised me most too.
I expected marketing to teach me about campaigns and promotion. Instead it kept pulling me back toward questions about people, incentives, trust, and decision-making.
And yeah, the portfolio realization was a weird one. For a long time I thought I was just documenting things I was building. Looking back, I was also telling a story about what I cared about and how I approached problems.
Really glad that part resonated with you.
Really enjoyed this perspective. It’s funny how many of us start out thinking that building great things is all about the technical side, and then slowly realize how much communication, positioning, and understanding people matter too. Great read!
That's right, and what's even more interesting is that how this makes sense for so many other professions out there... I am glad you enjoyed reading through! Thank you!
Welcome! Aryan❤️
One thing that stood out to me was the idea that value alone isn't enough. As engineers, we often focus on building better products, but we spend far less time learning how people perceive and understand that value. This post connected those two worlds really well.
I think that's exactly what surprised me.
For a long time I assumed that if something was genuinely useful, people would naturally recognize its value. But the more I looked around, the more examples I found of great products, ideas, and even people being overlooked simply because the value wasn't being communicated clearly.
Building the thing matters.
Helping people understand why it matters seems to matter just as much.
Glad the post resonated with you, and thanks for reading!
This is something I think about a lot.
The more I grow in software engineering, the more I realize technical quality and perceived value, these are actually two different problems. Building the product is one thing. But making the right people understand what you built, that's a completely different problem to solve.
And it's the same with career growth. Most engineers, including me, we just focus on getting better at the technical side. But I observed that the engineers who actually get opportunities they are not always the most skilled ones. They communicate well. They are visible. People trust them.
Skills matter. But skills alone don't create opportunities. How you present yourself, how you talk about your work, how people perceive you that decides a lot.
Your post made me think about this in a different way and For that thank a lot.
I think that's exactly the realization I've been slowly bumping into.
For the longest time, I assumed opportunities were mostly a function of skill. Now I'm starting to see that trust, visibility, communication, and reputation all play a role too.
Not in a superficial "personal brand" way, but in the sense that people need some way to understand what you can do and why it matters.
The technical work creates the value.
The human side helps that value travel.
Really enjoyed reading your perspective on this.
Understanding costumer requirements, economically turning them into working and optimized solutions, while providing a professional level of communication ... these are basic soft skills of ANY profession, not just engineers and marketeers, but also craftsman, bakers, cashiers...
I'd refuse to conclude that this somehow makes engineering and marketing particularly similar.
As you described yourself, engineering is about facts. Things work well or they don't.
Marketing is about believe, feelings, loyality, politics, psychology, people ...
These require fundamentaly different expertises and thinking. And trying to do both in one person can probably never compete with having specialists of each field working together.
That's a fair point, and I think I wasn't trying to argue that engineering and marketing are the same discipline.
I completely agree that they require very different expertise, and I'd much rather have a great engineer working alongside a great marketer than expect one person to master both.
What surprised me wasn't that the domains were identical, but that I kept encountering similar patterns underneath them.
Things like understanding requirements, reducing assumptions, gathering feedback, communicating clearly, and translating something complex into something another person can understand.
The outputs are obviously very different. One produces software, the other influences perception and understanding.
I think the realization for me was less "engineering and marketing are the same" and more "both involve humans a lot more than I originally expected."
Appreciate the pushback though. It game me the chance to clarify what I was actually trying to say.
I think marketing is more relevant today than ever. The cost to build (and posting content) is quickly approaching zero so how does one stand out?
I've learned that personal branding is extremely important with idea -> execution being so cheap nowadays. The more I dig, the more I realize that distribution is the bottleneck.
Whoever grabs attention and communicates value properly will distribute most effectively. Doesn't hurt to go viral too 😂
The most impressive tech that no one knows about is still just that, tech that no one knows about.
"Distribution is the bottleneck" is a sentence I've been hearing more often lately, and I'm starting to understand why.
The barrier to building has dropped so much that creating something is no longer the rare part. Getting the right people to discover it, understand it, and care about it is often the harder challenge.
I used to think marketing was mostly promotion. Now I'm starting to see it as helping value find the people who would benefit from it.
And yes... going viral probably doesn't hurt either 😂
Realizing that code is just half the battle and that marketing is actually just the "human optimization layer" for your software is a massive career cheat code.
"Human optimization layer" is an interesting way to put it haha
I think what surprised me most is that marketing isn't just about getting attention. It's also about understanding incentives, communicating value clearly, and making sure the right people understand why something matters.
The older I get, the more it feels like technical problems and people problems are much more connected than I originally thought.
HikerAPI is a robust tool built for developers who need quick, dependable access to public Instagram data. With its single API key system and clean, intuitive dashboard, it caters equally well to small-scale projects and enterprise-level workloads. Many users highlight its consistent uptime, fast response times, and straightforward integration process as standout qualities.
Strengths:
User-Friendly Onboarding: Clear documentation and simple authentication make it easy to get started.
High Reliability: Maintains stable performance even under heavy traffic.
Comprehensive Features: Offers multiple endpoints for analytics, content tracking, and automation workflows.
Support Quality: Helpful and responsive technical support team.
Limitations:
Cost Considerations: Pricing may feel steep for hobbyists or low-volume use cases.
Data Restrictions: Access is limited to publicly available Instagram information, in line with platform policies.
Bottom Line:
HikerAPI is a dependable, developer-oriented Instagram API solution that excels in performance and ease of use. It’s best suited for projects where speed, scalability, and reliability are top priorities, though smaller teams should assess whether the pricing aligns with their needs.
If you’d like, I can also create a feature comparison chart between HikerAPI and its main competitors to help with decision-making.